‘Guards at the Taj’ is just beginning previews at the Atlantic Theater Company

In “Animals Out of Paper,” a depressed origami master hasn’t left her art studio for weeks, surviving on deliveries of Szechuan beef. The two characters in “Gruesome Playground Injuries” are trapped in a cycle of self-destructive behavior. And “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” for which Mr. Joseph was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, starts with a caged tiger.